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Friday, January 30, 2015

Shake the Foundation

The Legislative Session thus far has been a bit of a slow
dance when it comes to public land and fish & wildlife bills. Not a lot of
action, nor has there been as much acrimony. But it’s not going to stay calm
for long.

Currently, a few legislators are maneuvering some bills to
try and achieve the Transfer of Public Lands. But lacking much support from
even within their own caucus, the raft of over 50 bills related to the Transfer
and Sale of Public Lands has seemingly been winnowed down to three, if we’re to
believe the Republican Party Caucus Sheet from this week. Those three bills
are…interesting and I understand that proponents of this effort are trying to
paint a picture of what their nirvana when only the government owns the land
would look like, but honestly, I find these bills to be a little insulting to
our collective intelligence.

For example: SB 215 would prohibit the sale of land
transferred to the state by the federal government. While this sounds good on
the surface, once you peel back the layers it looks a little less ripe. The
sponsor’s attempt to asuage the concerns of Montanans who rightly believe that
this attempt to wrest control of public lands out of the hands of the actual
public which owns them is commendable; but this ain’t our first rodeo.

We remember the previous sessions where the
legislature almost passed several bills that would have severely curtailed not
only our ability to own state land and severely impacted our ability to access
both public and private lands through our block management programs and Habitat
Montana, which expected to come under assault once again as Legislators show
their real hand, and claim that the State can’t manage what it has now, like
they have the last three sessions.

Perhaps a transformation has been made,
however, among the true believers. Perhaps the over 300 people who stood in a
driving rain on a cold September afternoon or 94% of public comment opposed to
the transfer and sale of public land convinced them that it’s time to hang it
up, to finally start working with the same people they've spent the last decade
fighting: Those of us who sit down with our neighbors at Resource Advisory
Councils and Forest Collaboratives and hash out our differences like neighbors
instead of plaintiff and defendant.

Nobody with any common sense thinks that our
forests are being managed correctly. Nobody believes that our BLM lands are
getting the attention they deserve when it comes to weed eradication. But it is
not the fault of the American people that Congress has cut funding by over 30%
in the last two decades to our public lands management agencies while demanding
more and more of them. At some point, the agency cracks, and the prophesies of
doom sold by elected officials who have made them self-fulfilling by only
placing roadblocks in our Public Land Agencies way.

When fire-fighting takes up 50% of the Forest
Service’s budget, and congresses response is to cut your spending elsewhere,
you cannot logically or honestly blame anyone other than who caused the
problems: The same politicians now telling us that the fed can’t manage land
that belongs to every single American citizen, so we have to hand it over to
state governments.

We even have a case in point with our own
Senator Steve Daines. Senator Daines, fresh in his seat in the United States
Senate, decided to introduce an amendment to the Keystone XL Pipeline bill
currently being debated. His amendment would not do anything. It would just say
that he thinks the Land and Water Conservation Fund is good, and Congress
should make the plan permanent sometime this century. That’s it. No action, no
real solutions, just a bit of feel-goodery. Meanwhile, his caucus members in
the Senate had a good amendment, carried by Senator Burr (R) from North
Carolina. That bill would permanently reauthorize the Land & Water
Conservation Fund and provide that 1.5 percent of the proceeds deposited in the
account would be used to increase access to land-locked public lands. That last
part is from a bill that Congressman Daines sponsored last session. Yet
Senator Daines cast the deciding vote against an issue he, until that day,
had been good on.

Maybe we, as the citizens or America are
responsible. After all, we elected these people.

But we also elected good people. This week we heard from one of them. In his State of the State address, Governor Bullock had some short, but profound words on the subject:

Those few words throw down the gauntlet on public lands this session. There
is a rally for public lands on February 16th, 2015 in Helena
Montana. Buses are available from Butte, Billings, Livingston, Bozeman, Great
Falls and Missoula. We did this in
September on a cold and rainy day. 350 people turned out because public lands
matter to Montanans. The short-term, boom and bust economies we all cringe
about would return. Sure there’d be a few more jobs, but only for a few short
years. The Bakken is a prime example of the folly of over-development. It’s the
same bust that’s hit the west every 20 years, and we’re having the same
arguments we always have, every 20 years.

Even Congressman Zinke backed that up today in his address to the Legislature, declaring that public lands are not for sale. Unfortunately, Congressman Zinke then said that he would rather give them away by supporting the Transfer of Public Lands; which is strange, because until today, he was against that.

It’s time we laid the nonsense to rest and show our elected officials
that public land matters to Montanans, and in the hands of the United States
Citizens they will stay.